Workmen's advocate. (New Haven, Conn.) 1883-1891, 1887-10-08

less those words We're taken out, and
10000 We're printed with the words left
out This meeting was not nearly as
large as other similar meetings had been
The mayor of the city attended and re-
manned a listener while Parsons and
Spies made their speeches and until
fully one-half of the audience had dis
persed. Near by were $50 policemen at
the station waiting for chance to use
their new revolvers, for which there
seemed no prospect The Mayor left as
Samuel Fielding began to speak He
went where this police force was wait
ing and informed its commander that
that the meeting was orderly, peaceful
and lawful and advised the police to 60
to their homes. He then went himself
Had Captain Bonfeld complied with the
advice of Mayor Harrison and sent the
police to their homes as he ought to have
done, an awful tragedy would have been
avoided and the fair fame of the great
State of illinois would not be stained
with something called judicial procedure,
| but which is travesty on law and an in
suit to common intelligence. No sooner
was the may or gone than Inspector Bon
| field ordered the men with drawn re-
volvers to charge down on the small
audience collected around a truck from
which Fielding was speaking AS this
force of 1870 men with cooked reyolvers
in tier hands approached, Fielding said,
1--WE are peaceable aeting," but on
came the police with the same order
used at Lexington by the redcoats. AT
| this juncture some one from beyond
them threw bomb among the police
| that caused the death of seven of them.
Who threw the deadly missile and the
motive that caused it to be thrown, is
still unknown. 1t may have been thrown
by hired agent of capital, who was ig-
norant of its awful destruciveness. 1t
may have been by some friend of the
working girls whose meeting a few nights
before had been entered by the police
and the girls dubbed from the room;
but whoever threw it, it is not claimed
or shown that any of these seven men
knew who did, or even counseled, aided
or abetted the act, further than to gener-
ally teach revolutionary doctrines
These men are indicted for the murder
of one of the police and for that convict
ed. read the record in this case with
wonder and alnazement. | look up and
ask myself whether am living in Russia,
the land of the car and knout, where it
is crime to think and speak, or in a
land where floats the stars and stripes
a'land of free speech and free press, a
land where the fundamental law guaran-
tees the right of the people to peaceably
assemble, land where as Judge Cooley
says in his work on constitutional law,
THAT peaceable meeting of the people
has right to defend by force such a
meeting by whomsoever attacked If
this be good law, and it will not, think
be questioned, who were the first in the
wrong at this Haymarket meeting? The
statement of the question gives its own
answer
Of these men has been pronounced a
farce and travesty on justice. AS a law
yer have still great veneration for the
forms of the law. believe in the jury
system. | believe in the established rules
of evidence. | love the flag and the
forms of our government SO well that
gave three of the best years of my life in
its service, but little did then dream all
of this could be 50 perverted as in this
case
Let me summaries:
u. The jury that tried these men
was packed jury, selected by the sher
if for the express purpose of convicting.
"2. The court i'll the trial of the case
ruled that men who had publicly and
privately expressed the opinion that
| r. l,n
competent to sit as jurors in the case
and did so sit.
90. Incompetent and wholly irrele.
want testimony was received and per-
mitted to go to the jury.
"a. There was no connection whatso-
ever established between the act which
caused the death of the policemen and
any one of these accused.
"5. The supreme court, or one of its
members says the record is not free from
error
''If these five propositions are correct
it becomes the duty of the United States
supreme court to interfere, because with
out that the State of Illinois will trample
on the the fourteenth amendment to the
constitution which provides that mo per-
son shall be deprived of his life without
due process of the law" If men on trial
for their lives are not entitled to record
free from error it seems strange.
Forty years ago the supreme court of
this nation ruled that the "black man
under our national constitution had no
rights which white man was bound to
respect and under that decision Dread
Scott was remanded back to the lash
and the chain. u took the blood of $780,
600 men to wash out that blot on our
constitution and write in its place the
fourteenth and fifteenth amendments.
whether these seven men die on the
gallows or not the present unjust social